I wrote this on my old Shysterball blog back in 2007. Sorry for the re-run, but (a) it’s Christmas and I have better things to be doing this morning than blogging; and (b) only a handful of people read Shysterball back in the day, so I’m sure most of you haven’t seen this anyway. Either way, I think it holds up. Merry Christmas, everyone.

My brother lives in San Diego and I live in Ohio, so I maybe see him twice a year. It’s been that way since he left home for the Navy the day after Thanksgiving eighteen years ago. I was sixteen then. I finished my last two years of high school, went on to college and law school, got married, had kids, and settled down in the Midwest. He spent six years on an Aegis cruiser, a couple more at Coronado, and took his discharge in 1997. Since then he has worked as a club DJ, dipped a toe in and then back out of the goth scene, spent time with a number of shady women before meeting a nice one, played Kato Kaelin to the lead singer of a notable synth-pop band, and most recently has performed product preparation and distribution services for a large Irvine, California-based concern. That’s him in the picture to the right, taken when we crashed the club level restaurant at Petco Park back in 2007.

In terms of distance, Curt and I haven’t lived within 500 miles of one another since he left home. By all other measures we haven’t been in the same solar system since then. We get along just fine and talk on the phone regularly, but if we weren’t brothers our adult paths would probably never cross. We live in wildly different worlds, speak wildly different languages, and pass the time doing wildly different things. I love him unconditionally, but we tend to get on each others’ nerves from time to time, and neither of us truly understands where in the hell the other is coming from.

But it wasn’t always that way. We were close as kids, with a lot of common interests, the most notable among them being baseball. We were both huge Tigers’ fans (his favorite player was Lou Whitaker; mine was Alan Trammell). We played on little league teams together for a while (he being the talented but uninterested one, I the exact opposite). But more than watching or playing the game itself, it was our love of baseball cards that brought us together as kids.

It started with the cutouts on the back of Hostess boxes in 1976 or 1977, and moved on to the Kellogg’s 3-D superstars a year or two later. In those days Dad worked with a guy who split his time as a card dealer, and once he saw how crazy we were about the things, cards just started showing up around the house. We’d go over to his house and trade for some. Or we’d buy some from him at highly discounted rates. I suspect a lot of them were just given to us per some arrangement between Lloyd and my dad. Between that kind of thing and the traditional spend-every-penny-we-ever-saw-on-wax-packs approach, by the mid-80s we had tens of thousands of cards spilling out of boxes in every spare corner of the house.

As is the case with just about every kid, however, our interest in cards waned as our interest in girls waxed. Even if it hadn’t, the hyper-commercialization of baseball cards in the late 80s would have done it anyway (we hoarded, sorted, traded, and oggled cards like mad, but I can’t recall a single instance in which we ever sold one). By the time Curt shipped out, they had been placed in plastic sheets or monster boxes in the basement and, while not forgotten, certainly not thought about all that much. Over the years, as my parents’ addresses became increasingly erratic and mine more permanent, the cards migrated to my basement where they currently sit and are rarely disturbed. In the past couple of years Curt has asked me to ship him certain cards from our communal stash as he began dabbling in hockey cards and was in need of trade bait, but other than that I’ve had no real cause to go through them. Hell, the last inventory of them was typed up using the Speedscript word processor on my Commodore 64.

Last week, Curt flew in from San Diego for a couple of days for his annual Christmas visit. The night before he flew back home, we exchanged Christmas gifts. We tend to be a family who doesn’t go over the top with these things, so I was understandably dumbfounded when I opened my gift from him: the entire 1973 Topps set (my birth year) in plastic sheets in a notebook. With a couple of very tiny exceptions, the whole thing is in mint or near mint condition.

He didn’t just go out and buy it in one shot, though, as a guy working at In-n-Out Burger tends not to have that kind of money laying around. Rather, he began picking up stuff here and there months ago (our childhood collection had almost no 1973s), trading some import records for some of this, trading vintage clothing for some of that, and only biting the bullet and straight-up buying stuff in only a handful of cases. It was truly a labor of love on his part which, given how much flak I’ve given him for so many things over the years — including, ironically enough, his habit for hording, selling, and trading records and vintage clothes when he could be out doing something more productive — was every bit as undeserved as it was unexpected.

As I sit here this evening poring over the notebook full of ’73s — highlights of which, at the risk of invading Josh Wilker’s turf, I plan to blog in the next couple of days* — I’m wondering why someone from whom I’ve grown so far apart over the years would make such a thoughtful and touching gesture, especially given how hard I’ve been on him. But I suppose that’s Christmas. I suppose that’s family. I suppose, most of all, that’s Curt.

Thank you. It’s so much like my brother and I. I’m in Pennsylvania, and he’s halfway across the country in North Dakota. Lifelong baseball fans, played together in midget baseball, and of course, collected baseball cards in the 1960s. Merry Christmas.

My little brother and I have always been apart: he’s 10 years younger and lives in Orlando, while I’m here in NorCal. I loved the original post when it was in Shysterball, and I’m still touched by it today. I think I’ll go call my brother, and wish him, and you Craig, and all the HBT followers a Merry Christmas.

For the past 10 years or so, my favorite moment of Christmas day is opening baseball cards with my father (A box of 2010 Topps 206 currently sits unopened in front of me, filled with what-might-be). Thank you for the post, Craig.
One of my resolutions for the new year is to comment more often. Until then, happy holidays to you and yours.

Much thanks…this post prompted me to start my own 73 collection. A few years later and I’m only about 60% there (still no Schmidt). Some of the copy writing and photography makes me wish I could work for a monopoly someday. Side note, how did you go from something personal like that story to having your own baseball sources?

Gerat post. As a 10-yr-old, I completed my own set in ’73 (which I still have and value). I always did like the backs as much as the fronts. I also remember ’73 as the first year the higher series didn’t come out too late and too short printed for a kid to actually have a shot at completing the set. I was an adult by the time I finished the ’72 set (the OCD in me just couldn’t let it go, plus ’72 was the first year I actually bought cards).

Coming here from your link today… the 1973 set is the one I had the most of from my childhood and I have kept chipping away at it… I’m 9 away from the complete set (although mostly miles from near mint). In fact, I have **3** of the Schmidt/Cey rookie cards!